Acts 11.19-26, 29-30

John 4.5-42

The angel said to the Myrrhbearing women: ‘the LORD is risen! Lo, He goes before you into Galilee. There, you will see Him.’ (Mk 16.7) It says in our Gospel lesson this morning that the LORD ‘left Judea and came again into Galilee.’ (Jn 4.3)

It was necessary that He pass through Samaria, it says. Where is He going? Contemplate this morning’s Gospel in the [uncreated] Light of the liturgical Path the Church is now leading us on. We are in Paschatide. Where is the LORD leading us now? Is it not to the Mountain of His Ascension?

The top of a mountain corresponds to the grave. From the top of the mountain, you can go no further without leaving the earth and going up into the sky. You come to your grave as to the top of the mountain of your life. You can go no further without leaving this life and passing over into the deep, beyond all things, beyond the top of the mountain.

The LORD is passing again into Galilee and going through Samaria in His Holy Resurrection to lead all who believe in Him, both Jew and Gentile, to our grave as to the top of the Mountain of His Ascension and to the ‘Land of our Inheritance’ (Eze 37.12-14).

On the way, He comes to a well. A well goes deep into the earth, like a tomb – and yet, the well brings forth water, the source of life. It’s like the LORD’s Tomb that He has transfigured into the Fountain of our Life. He comes to the well at the sixth hour, the hour in which He was crucified for our sake, and blood and water came forth from His side. This is the moment when the Church, His Bride that is flesh of His flesh, bone of His bones, Spirit of His Spirit, and so therefore, risen from the dead, beginning with the Holy Virgin Theotokos, came forth from His pierced rib just as ‘woman’ – who brings forth life – came forth from the rib of Adam.

It says that this well was Jacob’s well, and that, being weary, the risen LORD Jesus sat down on the well to rest – the image of the LORD Jesus descending from Heaven to rest in us who were dead in our sins and trespasses. But, how is the risen LORD Jesus needing to rest now? He is looking to rest in those in all the nations who believe in Him and who long to rest in Him. He desires to become one with those in all the nations who long to become one with Him who love Him who first loved us with all their heart, soul, strength and mind, who long to lose their life in Him so that it is no longer they who live but He who lives in them – I think this love of the heart by which we become one with the LORD Jesus in the Holy Spirit as He is one with the Father is the meaning of the Bible’s Sabbath Rest.

He comes to rest on the well of Jacob, of Israel and He finds this ‘woman’ coming to the well from the nearby village of Sychar in Samaria to draw water. He finds this ‘woman’ at that point of her longing for life.

With this, if we are to fathom the depths of theology in this morning’s Gospel, we must enter the OT as Sts Peter and John entered the LORD’s Tomb – for the LORD has rolled the stone away from the eyes of those who believe so that, if they would, they may behold the wonders of His Law (Ps 118.18LXX), the wonders, i.e., of the LORD’s Incarnation and Holy Pascha.

In the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalmist, we may look and see all that St John saw in the LORD’s empty Tomb, and come to know and to believe in Jesus as the LORD Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate who has partaken of our flesh and blood as the Heavenly Bridegroom, our ‘kinsman,’ (Sg Sol) in whose Image we were created, and who has cleaved to us, His Bride, and become bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh that we may become one Spirit with Him and partake of His own divine nature (2Pt 1.4).

Entering the LORD’s Tomb in Genesis [29], we read that Jacob came to this very well centuries ago. There he found Rachel, his ‘kinswoman’ who would become his bride, Rachel, coming to the well to water her father’s sheep. Jacob had left his father and ‘homeland’ to find his bride, his ‘kinswoman.’ The Son of God left His Throne of Glory to find us, His bride, His ‘kin’, for we were created in His Image.

It says that Jacob went to the Land of the East – the land of the Resurrection! The LORD Jesus is coming at the Sixth Hour; He comes to us in the mystery of His Cross in which He has destroyed our death by His death. And, He is making His way again into Galilee, to the Land of the East, to the Mountain of His Ascension, up to the Land of the Kingdom of Heaven in His Resurrection.

And on the way, He finds this ‘woman.’ Early Christian biblical exegesis saw those whom the Evangelists called ‘woman’ in their Gospels as images of the ‘woman’ built by God from Adam’s rib, and who, because she was bone of Adam’s bone and flesh of His flesh, was called ‘woman.’  The LORD gives to this woman His own Living Water, His Holy Spirit in His love for her, and she would indeed give Him the water to drink, her love that He desired from her. For, we know in the Church that she would be baptized and chrismated in the Name of Our LORD God and Savior Jesus Christ as Photini – Enlightened Woman – and she would be glorified as a martyr to Jesus Christ, her Heavenly Bridegroom. I venerated her relics at Iveron monastery on Mt Athos in 2011.

Can we not ‘see’ and understand that Jacob is the image of the LORD Jesus, the Heavenly Bridegroom who comes at Midnight, who comes to the well of our heart and to the root of our erotic desire for life? And, Photini is the image of Rachel, Jacob’s ‘kinswoman’ who would become his bride. The Heavenly Bridegroom comes to the ‘woman’ at the well at the Sixth Hour. In the ‘mystery’ of His Holy Resurrection He comes to us who are dead in our sins and trespasses at the Sixth Hour – High Noon, the mirror reflection of Midnight. He comes to us at the root of our longing for life for God the LORD, the Heavenly Bridegroom of our flesh and blood.

It says that when Jacob saw Rachel coming to this very well to water her father’s sheep, he rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, and he watered her sheep. He gave her water. He satisfied her desire as the LORD satisfies our every desire – so the Psalmist says. And then, it says, he kissed her, and cried with a loud voice, and wept, and revealed Himself to Rachel as her ‘kinsman!’ And when Laban meets Jacob, he says to him, You are of my bones and of my flesh.’

In His Resurrection, the LORD rolled the stone away from His Tomb. He opened to us the Fountain of Life in the Garden of His Resurrection. In the Upper Room on the Eighth Day of His Resurrection, the LORD breathed His Holy Spirit on His disciples, like Jacob kissing Rachel, and they became ‘apostles,’ those sent out to proclaim to us, the ‘woman’ of Samaria, and to all the nations, like Laban proclaiming to Jacob, ‘You are of the LORD’s bones and of His flesh. You are kin to God!’ Love Him who first loved you. Cleave to Him who now cleaved to you, who, though He knew no sin, became sin for us that we might become, in Him, the Righteousness of God, that we might eat His Body and drink His Blood that is broken and distributed to all those among the nations who draw near to Him in the fear of God, with faith and in love, that is divided yet not disunited, that is eaten yet never consumed, but rather it sanctifies us because we partake of His own divine nature. It makes us to be one Spirit with Him, the only-begotten God, our ‘kinsman,’ for by His Incarnation of the Holy Virgin and His death and burial, He has become bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh. He is the Heavenly Bridegroom our soul longs for. Amen! Glory to Jesus Christ! Christ is risen! Most holy Theotokos, save us!